Tennis Elbow SymptomsHow do you know if you have Tennis Elbow?

First you start to notice Tennis Elbow Symptoms, like some ache in your forearm, in the muscles up towards your sore elbow. Maybe you missed the ache and the first time you noticed something was wrong it was actual pain.

Everybody and their experience of Tendonitis is a little different.

You probably took a pain killer or put some ice on it.

You probably woke up feeling fine the next day and forgot about it.

Then the Tennis Elbow symptoms came back.

At some point, it stayed constant and you got worried about it.

That is actually an identifying symptom: The pain comes and goes until it stays for good.

Hopefully you’re at the ‘comes and goes’ stage.

Some people jump right past it to the ‘it’s here to stay’ stage.

Perhaps your doctor told you that you have Lateral Epicondylitis.

That’s yet another name for Tennis Elbow, btw.

Tennis Elbow SymptomsWhat are the Symptoms of Tennis Elbow?

You could officially have Tennis Elbow if you have one or all of the following symptoms of:

1. Ache, soreness, and or pain in the area just below your elbow, on the outside (the hairy side) of your forearm.

Most of this pain is not from the ‘injury’ so much as it is from the Pain Causing Dynamic. If you can get the Inflammation out, you’ll likely be at least close to pain free.

The injury of tendonitis doesn’t really hurt. It’s the body’s reaction to it that creates pain.

2. That pain is made worse by extending your wrist (lifting your wrist as if to type) and/or squeezing your grip.

Your muscles are now so chronically tight and bunched up and, like a half squeezed sponge, so full of waste product, that when you try and contract those muscles, they’re very unhappy about it.

They’re already working hard and contracted too much even when they are ‘at rest’. So when you tell them to contract even more, there’s just too much squeeze and too much load on them.

They are hurting. More work makes them hurt worse.

3. You could have any or all of these:

Dull ache, sharp pain, burning, stinging, throbbing, some degree of numbness/tingling in your pinkie finger and that side of your hand.

The types of pain also apply to #1 above.

Everybody is different. So everybody hurts differently.

I personally have never felt a burning or stinging muscle pain. Lots of people do.

As REM sings it, "Every body hurts.....some time".

4. Spasm or twitch of the muscles in the area.

Two possible reasons:

The first is...when your muscles are constantly firing because they are tight, you can get out of balance and/or deficient with the minerals necessary to fire and stop firing muscle fibers.

Calcium is required to fire a muscle. Magnesium is required to turn that firing signal off.

Drink more good water and take some multi-mineral/vitamin supplements. Electrolytes.

The second possibility is that when muscles are too tight for long periods of time, the nervous system can just get confused. When it’s confused you can get all sorts of weird electrical signals flying around.

5. Decreased ability to grip an object. This could be from loss of strength potential, or increased pain when squeezing.

Basically, because your muscles are too tight, they have a hard time contracting more. The less contracting available, the less strength available.

6. Tenderness when touching the muscles of your forearm and/or the bony part of outer elbow bone. Pain when bumping the area against something.

The whole area will be tender to pressure. There is a lot of unhappiness going on it there.

7. Radiating pain from the elbow down in to the forearm and possibly to the back of the wrist.

Basically, even though the ‘injury’ is up near the elbow, pain can be felt down the nerve pathway.

Said another way, the problem is that A. It's not going to get better on it's own and B. once the dynamic starts, it's a one way track to getting worse and worse, slowly or quickly.

If your symptoms get really bad, Doctors will likely think that it's a good idea to perform
Tennis Elbow Surgery.
My professional opinion, and because I know how to manage and/or cure Tennis Elbow, is that surgery is a bad idea.